Sometimes, you'll hear pundits say that these kinds of layoffs are aimed at "the bottom 5%" or whatever, but who's been around for these cycles knows that lots

Sometimes, you'll hear pundits say that these kinds of layoffs are aimed at "the bottom 5%" or whatever, but who's been around for these cycles knows that lots of good people get cut alongside the actual underperformers. There's also a lot of "last to be hired, first to be fired" in big layoffs, so presumably with those people you aren't losing too much tribal knowledge. In some cases, the layoffs were targeted at particular areas of the company, like Amazon targeting their devices group. If they don't anticipate growth in that area, it may not be worth it (to management, anyways) to reallocate those employees to other parts of the company. All that being said, these things tend to be driven by short-term financial metrics rather than long-term ones. A hiring freeze wouldn't have as dramatic an impact on next quarter's earnings.